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Doomsday Vault: First Tree Samples Arrive At Underground Seed Store

Posted by samzenpus on from the last-hope dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into an Arctic mountain, received its first delivery of tree seeds. Opened in 2008, the vault is designed to withstand all natural and human disasters. From the article: "The 'doomsday' vault built into an Arctic mountain, which stores seeds for food crops in case of a natural disaster, has received its first delivery of tree samples. Norway spruce and Scots pine seeds have arrived at the frozen vault, which is located on Svalbard, an archipelago owned by and north of Norway. The organizations behind the vault hope to bring more seeds from outside of the Nordic countries. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault will now look after the samples and use them to monitor how natural forests change. They will also keep them as back-ups, in case any of the species are lost, and to see how the forests change during breeding."

2 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Re:doesn't DNA age or lose fidelity ? by cdrudge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They will still age and degrade, but the cold temperatures and lack of oxygen due to their packaging prolong the process. It's kind of like a sealed or open package in your fridge and freezer. The better sealed and the colder stored, the longer whatever it is will last...but only up to a point.

    Depending on the seed type it may only be a relatively short time, say a dozen or two years, or it may be decades or much much longer for a more hardy seed. Whatever that time limit is, seeds can be rotated out, planted, and hopefully new generations grown to be refrozen perpetuating the cycle.

  2. Re:Scandinavians by jandersen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here again, the Scandinavians prove they are the most superior culture on the planet

    As a Dane, I can confirm this in full; also, we are tall, blond, honest and noble.

    However, we are not the only ones to have a seed bank - Wikipedia lists 5 major facilities: The millennium Seed Bank in UK, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the Australian PlantBank, the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry and National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in the US, as well as several smaller ones in India.